The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 261 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Seibel: Many founders gear up for customer 100 before securing customer one
“I see a lot not even engaging in the zero to one, like, you know, they're hiring a bunch of people, getting an office, like they almost
Forget they have to get the first customer and they start gearing up for customer 100.”
Seibel: Founders should unfollow accounts and media promoting investor-style thinking
“Diagnose why you started thinking this way, and if that means, like, unfollowing some people on Twitter, or not reading certain publications, like, to do it. We're susceptible to the inputs that come to our mind, and like, the easiest way we do this is turn th…”
Seibel: Spending time with users cures macro thinking because users disregard macro
“I also think spending time with your users is a cure for this because your users don't care about macro at all.”
Founders often forget to ensure they enjoy helping their target customer
“Another way I like to think about that is to convince yourself this customer is worth helping. Like you're going to enjoy spending time with this customer. And I find a lot of founders kind of want to skip That part.”
Most investors initially thought eventual big companies were horrible ideas
“If you look at the history of really big companies, so many of them, most investors thought that the idea was horrible.”
Startups that learn before pivoting make actual forward progress
“A company that will build something, learn over a period of time, and then pivot will often pivot from a place of knowledge and like actually continue to make forward progress.”
Failed founders who learned remain motivated, unlike aimless pivoters
“Like, the folks who learned and didn't succeed are often motivated to go out and do it again, or go work in a company in that space. Like, this is an additive experience in their life, even if their shop didn't work. The ones who do the random walk, like they …”
If nobody uses your product, it is not an MVP
“If you can't get anyone to use your MVP, it's probably not an MVP.”
Seibel: Successful Startups Take 12 Years to Pay Off
“The ones that work take like 12 years to work, right? So it's like even for the ones that do well, like you don't make money fast being an early stage startup investor.”
Seibel: Expecting technological advancement without negative trade-offs is magical thinking
“It's magical thinking to think that we get all the things we spent the first chunk of the video talking about, and there's nothing bad. That's magical. That's like, that's not being an adult.”
Seibel: Great business founders stand out by recruiting top technical co-founders
“The best business founders Recruit amazing technical co-founders. And that is how they distinguish themselves. That is the number one distinction. So it's not what's on your resume, where you worked, the fact that you were some fancy executive, that you're tal…”
Seibel: Twitch would have failed without his three technical co-founders
“I was the single non-technical person on a four-person co-founding team at JustinTV and Twitch, and like I'll just make it plain, without my three other co-founders, none of that shit happens.”
Seibel: Pitching co-founders on adventure works because competing offers are rare
“When you're pitching adventure, there aren't a lot of, there aren't a lot of alternatives. Most people don't have six adventures on the plane, right?”
Seibel says essential scale-up engineers should expect life-changing upside, not bonuses.
“I would say if you're in the scale up, And you are the essential engineer. The test I would kind of ask myself is, is if this thing works, are you going to make a life changing amount of money? And, you know, I would argue that like, you know, that doesn't mea…”
Seibel argues engineers learn much faster at a startup than at Google.
“I think most people don't realize that, like, you can learn at a startup pace or you can learn at a Google pace, and like, a startup is an amazing opportunity to learn. So if you're getting better, faster than your peers who are in big tech, You might be getti…”
Seibel claims non-technical founders are doomed if their amazing technical partner leaves.
“Cause like, if that amazing tech person leaves your company, you're fucked.”
Seibel: During Facebook's rise, startups believed charging users was forbidden
“Charging users was against the rules.”
Seibel: Investors funded Uber's expansion because of strong local unit economics
“People who were investing in Uber were looking at markets where Uber was doing very well in unit economics and purposely funding them to expand quickly. It wasn't people looking at Uber serving no markets well, burning money left and right, and saying, oh, let…”
Seibel: High valuations mislead founders into thinking unproven startups are working
“And I think that, unfortunately, these valuations have gotten people all messed up in the head. Like, they think that if investor thinks it's worth a billion dollars, it's working.”
Seibel: Founders pursue superficial startup status symbols to impress peers
“These are things that founders do to impress themselves, to impress other founders. The user is not essential.”
Seibel: Startups must copy because innovating everything is impossible
“Maybe the base conclusion here is that you have to do some copying. You cannot innovate everything.”
Seibel: Delaying startup creation to upskill makes founders ten times stronger
“Like, deferring a little bit of that satisfaction of getting started right now so you can upskill makes you 10 times more powerful Later.”
Seibel: Non-technical founders feel borderline useless in early startup stages
“I was the business guy who didn't know how to code and literally I would say there are many moments in the early stage of a company where I felt borderline useless, and certainly I didn't have the power to impact the product anywhere near as much as my other t…”
Seibel: Customers Forgive Startup Mistakes If Founders Genuinely Care
“And I think you might find that with your customers, like, even if you screw up, like, if you really care and you're really helping them, they're not gonna fire you. They're not gonna fire you. It's, it is so rare to find products or people who actually care. …”
Seibel: Startups function because the ecosystem is a high-trust environment
“I think that the thing you should understand about the startup world is that a lot of it works because of honesty. A lot of the reasons why early adopting customers will use you is because like They think you're going to be honest. A lot of reasons why investo…”
Seibel: Early YC Advising Failed by Prioritizing Fun Over Hard Feedback
“And I think as an, as a YC partner in the early days, I think I measured my effectiveness based on how much fun founders had talking to me. And only after a couple of batches that I realized that doesn't really do anything. And then when I started having hones…”
Seibel: Founders Mistakenly Use Advisors as a Shortcut for Customer Research
“One is this assumption that we are like godlike advisors with complete understandings of every user base and every problem in the world. And like, They can kind of like shortcut talking to users if they just spend enough time talking to us. And so that one is …”
Seibel: YC prefers co-founders with preexisting relationships to prevent blowups
“This is why we like teams who known each other for at least a little bit and have some kind of work or personal relationship. Because I always say that like, when you have some kind of non, you know, if you have some kind of base relationship that you might wa…”
Seibel: Pushing to resolve conflict immediately can worsen problems with avoidant partners
“I love to engage and like lean in and talk through conflict, but it's just as likely the person that I'm working with wants to avoid conflict or wants to take time to process conflict or doesn't process conflict through conversation. And like, I have to look a…”
Seibel: First Mentorship Conversations Are Often Wrong, Requiring Constant Self-Questioning
“In fact, I might argue in many times, the first conversations we have are wrong. I think the only thing that we do well is we continuously ask ourselves, are we lying to ourselves?”
High-status careers like finance appeal to ambitious students by replicating school
“Finance, consulting, law, medicine, those were the like easy ones. And they had a lot of the characteristics of school. Like there was a clear application process. There was a clear steps. These steps were kind of imposed upon you. Like the, it was a very comf…”
Great founders bet on their learning capacity over their day-one skills
“What's funny is that like, once again, that's typically not based on the skill that they come in with day one. It's always based on their assumption that they can accomplish whatever needs to be accomplished or learn whatever needs to be learned or meet any ch…”
The average YC company dies; getting admitted means you accomplished nothing
“The average YC company dies. Like you literally have accomplished in the scale of making any impact on the world, getting into YC means you've accomplished nothing.”
Seibel: Overly aggressive startup goals demotivate founders and stem from fear
“When people set goals that are so aggressive, they aren't motivational. And they're basically missing the understanding of what the purpose of setting a goal is, right? Like you want to motivate yourself to act smarter, faster, more intelligently than you woul…”
Seibel: Monetizing startups should track revenue rather than registered users
“For companies who charge their customers money, somehow creating a goal incremented in something that's not money Hey, my product costs 10 dollars a month, but I'm measuring registered users. I want to hit, you know, a thousand registered users, and it's like,…”
Seibel: YC Evaluates Progress on Hard Problems, Not Arbitrary Goal Metrics
“First of all, we're not grading. We're not your teacher. We're not your boss. And second of all, like your job is to work on the hardest problem in your company like that. Like if you've made progress on the hardest problems in your company, you're doing well.”
Seibel: Startups scaling negative unit economics will eventually face financial reality
“I think people don't realize that either some stage of investors or at some point in your company, someone's going to pull out your finances and do basic arithmetic and ask themselves, is this real?
And like eventually you will be judged based on like, is this…”
Seibel: Startups often attempt corporate acquisitions far too early
“It just often means the folks who are thinking about it in startup land tend to be thinking about it too early. This is like another example of like taking later stage advice too early. When like the advice you should be taking is make your core business work.”
Seibel: Successful Founders Spend Negligible Time on Angel Investments
“When you're a good founder, oftentimes you know other good people, and the opportunity you have to give them money requires almost no time or effort, and so you just, and like, if you're a good founder, oftentimes people are offering you Deals. And so like, yo…”
Seibel: Y Combinator poorly communicates what the program actually offers to applicants
“I would argue this is something that YC does poorly, that they very clearly pointed out. They were like, when we applied to YC, we really didn't know what we were applying for.”
Seibel: S22 seed investors committed in 1–2 meetings without board demands
“Didn't see any change on speed. You know, we saw investors going from meeting to commitment within one to two meetings. Didn't see any difference on terms. Like, you know, investors weren't demanding board seats or weird craziness.”
Seibel: Typical YC S22 Startup Received 10 to 70 Inbound Investor Emails
“Like, a typical company in this batch got between 10, and I've seen 60 or 70 investors cold emailing them. Wanting to learn about investing in their company.”
Seibel: Second-time founders default to expert advice over talking to users
“As a second time founder, it's just as hard to talk to your users But it's 10 times easier to talk to experts. So almost by extension, it's like even harder to talk to your users.”
Seibel: Second-time founders face equal lows but muted emotional highs
“You know, one of the things we've been saying is like the lows are just as low, but the highs aren't as high.”
Seibel: Resource Constraints Force First-Time Founders to Innovate More
“Because they're going to have harder times typically raising money or hiring employees, they tend to have to innovate more. Like they tend to have to, they're constrained into building something good. Whereas like the lack of constraints so often lead people a…”
Seibel: Overly optimistic founders lose all employee trust
“When you cross over being too optimist, your employees start questioning everything. Like you lose all trust. Cause they're like, oh crap. Like if the leader can't see this obvious thing right in front of their face oh, like what else have I not uncovered yet …”